The BBC More or Less statistics programme is one of the last remaining Radio 4 programmes worth a listen. It tries to dispassionately analyse the data behind often narrative-driven and politicised claims. Except when it comes to climate change and Net Zero of course. Here it is seemingly bound by the BBC’s weird view of ‘settled’ science which gives alarmists and activists a free broadcast pass to create mass climate psychosis. Case in point, a recent cringe-inducing ‘why are you so very wonderful’ interview with the Green Blob-funded Attribution Queen Professor Friederike Otto.
Presenter Tim Harford set the ball rolling with a suggestion that the British weather is getting “downright weird”. This seems to refer to the fact that days can sometimes be sunny, sometimes sodden, sometimes on the same day. These factual burdens might be considered obvious to anyone who has bravely lived for more than six months in the British Isles. Otto of course was delighted to run with the Guardianista “weird” tag, suggesting that some colleagues do actually call it “global weirding”. Particularly colleagues who like herself try to second guess the chaotic atmosphere with computer models producing pseudoscientific, lawfare-ready climate Armageddon nonsense, it might be said.
No attempt was made to question Otto’s bonkers claim that “every time it rains now, it rains more than it would have without climate change”. Not in Scotland, Harford might have noted, the rainiest country in the United Kingdom. As the Met Office graph below shows, the amount of Scottish rainfall has flatlined for about 40 years.
Over in Northern Ireland, the flat line has been holding steady for 25 years, while in England, cyclical rainfall amounts have recovered to 1870s levels. Not much sign of humans fiddling with the weather with regard to these ones, Harford did not point out.
On a global level, rainfall totals do not seem to have changed much. A recent paper found little overall change in the Amazon over the last 300 years. In 2022, a group of Italian scientists led by Professor Gianluca Alimonti consulted widely available data and found that rainfall intensity and frequency had remained stationary worldwide, with no sign of a significant rise in flood magnitude.
The Alimonti findings were eventually retracted by Nature after a gang of activists – including, no prizes for guessing, F. Otto – said it that it should never have been published. Otto claimed that the scientists were not operating in “good faith” and “if the journal cares about science it should withdraw it loudly and publicly, saying that it should never have been published”. There are lots of stats in this infamously retracted work, including those from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a biased body, but one nevertheless that currently observes little recent change in most extreme weather events. But, it seems, none of these stats interest More or Less.
Global temperatures have risen by 1.6°C since pre-industrial times, stated Otto, a claim that seems to reply on picking a recent high point that is now rapidly falling, unreliable temperature measurements and seemingly adding some extra for luck. Even the UK Met Office – activist-central for the Net Zero fantasy – estimates that long-term warming averaged over decades is around 1.3°C. In fact, unnatural urban heat corruption and regular additions of warming on a retrospective basis probably mean the true figure is more like 1°C. Try as it might, the Met Office cannot get anywhere near 1.6°C. Its imaginative 20-year average from 2015-2034 that cherry picks a strong El Niño spike in 2015 and estimates/invents temperature figures going forward a decade can only get to warming of 1.4°C.
Perhaps one day More or Less can get around to investigating the moveable feast that is global temperature calculation. Good luck on that one – there are more fiddles in this particular branch of climate science than can be found at the Come all ye Fiddlers Night at the Fiddlers Arms in Fiddlington-on-Sea.
More or Less has past form in listening reverently to activists cherry-picking data to push a narrative. In 2024, a short World Service edition noted that the Daily Sceptic had reported sea ice in the Arctic had soared to its highest extent for 21 years on January 8th of that year. A claim of “cherry-picking” appeared even though the rest of the article considered the short and long-term trends. The BBC consulted Professor Julienne Stroeve, an ‘Earth Scientist’ from UCL, who noted that the long-term decline from 1979 was easy to see. Just as easy to see was the flatlining of the sea ice extent over the last 20 years. In fact, using a four-year average, the trend has been slightly upwards over the last few years. Perish reporting the thought that 1979 was an obvious cyclical high, with lower sea ice in the decades before. Ignoring or downplaying all this plays into a favoured narrative, peddled by everyone from Al Gore to David Attenborough, that the summer sea ice is about to disappear in the northern polar regions.
If More or Less is going to brave the politically treacherous waters of climate change science, it needs to up its game, start examining all the data and stop giving an easy, unquestioning ride to those with an obvious Net Zero fantasy narrative to promote.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.
Is that true, or did you hear it on the BBC, as the saying goes.
It must be true as you hear it on Aunty too-
How climate change is making extreme rainfall events like the Great Ocean Road flooding more frequent and intense
The dams wots never gunna fill but then there’s the ones wot gushes over the top and causes more dooming and and….
Does that stand for the British Bullshit Channel?
Biased Broadcasting Channel
I stopped watching or listening to any news program on the BBC years ago for health reasons. I am trying to keep my blood pressure under control and five minutes of BBC propaganda is enough to get my blood pressure soaring.
I see any climate stuff from the BBC (or ms Otto)..
I can barely stop from ROFLMAO !!!
They should call it Slop-stick comedy “S” bend.
Have you heard of National Public Radio?
The one in Albany, NY is atrocious. When driving, I sometimes listen to see what BS they’re pushing. 95% of the time I turn it on, it’s all about Trump and his administration and how evil they are- and I’m not exaggerating! All day every day.
We simply don’t have enough volcanoes (plus virgins) and dark satanic mills anymore to overcome the global boiling-
World warming faster than forecast as pollution cuts remove hidden cooling effect
3 cylinder 500cc triturbo 15 speed automatic cars will be taxed onerously until V8 three on the tree pickup sales improve
“Two-thirds of the global warming since 2001 is sulphur dioxide reduction rather than carbon dioxide increases.”
-Peter Cox, Professor of Climate System Dynamics at the University of Exeter
Humanity does not emit enough SO2 to affect the climate. It is quickly rained out. Cox is just another person who wants the public to believe that human industrial emissions are large enough to affect the climate, ergo…industry must be made non-existent even if it lifts us out of medieval living standards.
“No attempt was made to question Otto’s bonkers claim that “every time it rains now, it rains more than it would have without climate change”. Not in Scotland, Harford might have noted, the rainiest country in the United Kingdom. As the Met Office graph below shows, the amount of Scottish rainfall has flatlined for about 40 years.”
Even though Morrisons’s graph does show a sig increase in annual rainfall since the 80’s, that is not answering the statement posed above ….
“every time it rains now, it rains more …”
IOW every time is signifying an event not a yearly average.
To that question see the below graph…
“Annual count of the number of UK station-days which have recorded daily rainfall totals greater than or equal to 50 mm from 1961 to 2022, adjusted for station network size and excluding stations above 500 m above sea level. The table provides average annual values (station-days).”
And here are the stats for >= 10mm events (NB the >= 1mm events came with the jpg)
OK, and does this mean the UK should move its generating capacity to wind and solar? Why? What difference will that make?
Not to mention the obvious question, why does anyone think the patterns shown in the above charts are caused by fluctuations in the global average temperature? Not just what is the correlation, though that’s an interesting question. Also what is the mechanism?
Now all you have to do is explain why near zero tend to mid 1970s, then a rise, then near zero trend for last 20-25 years.
Attribute that to continually rising CO2, using bogus computer games.
Or did Met Office add some more bogus sites during the 1975-2000 period ?
Sorry michel, post above was meant as a reply to the Met shill.
Its a cult. One way you can see this is the disconnect between its factual claims and the policy prescriptions it claims to be justified by them.
Suppose they were right, suppose the weather in the UK has changed to become more variable over recent decades, suppose the pattern of rainfall in the UK has changed, suppose it is due to global warming.
Does this make it any more likely that they can run the country on wind and solar? Does this make doing that, even if you could do it, any more effective in changing UK weather patterns? On which, even if the climate enthusiasts are right, on their own theories it can have no effect.
To see the insanity in action, look at the last UK wind auction, presided over by Ed Miliband, Minister for Energy and Climate Change.
[By the way, the title is nonsense, why not a UK Minister for the Monsoon, he would have just as much influence on that as he has on the global climate? Or perhaps they should appoint a UK minister for the Gulf Stream or El Nino or the Jet Stream?]
The UK currently has approximately 34.5 GW of gas-fired power generation capacity.
In the most recent Contracts for Difference (CfD) auction, Allocation Round 7 (AR7) which concluded on January 14, 2026, a total of 8.4 GW of offshore wind capacity was awarded.
This is supposed to have been a great success for Miliband and set the country onto a secure and cost effective energy path. Never mind that, as Paul Homewood has shown, it is far more expensive than gas would have been.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2026/01/14/ar7-will-add-1-9-billion-to-electricity-bills/#more-90334
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2026/01/15/2-7-billion-bill-for-floating-wind/
The real problem, that will lead inexorably to blackouts, is that this 8.4GW will only deliver around 3GW on average. It will have prolonged periods in winter when it delivers less than 0.5GW, There is no provision to cover this intermittency. Meanwhile the 35GW of wind is reaching end of life. And the government is at the same time doing everything it can to increase demand.
This is complete madness.
No wonder they are cancelling elections. You would too, if you were hell bent on driving your country into blackouts, rationing and ever higher electricity prices while promising it lower prices and greater energy security!
And if you were the BBC, and, as they are, coming up to a new round of funding negotiations with this insane government, you too would be, at every chance you got, endorsing their climate and energy fantasies.
The question inquiring minds are asking is whether the Government will find it safe and healthy to hold national elections in 2029. Or will they perhaps get in the way of transforming Britain? Just as Labour local councils across the country are finding that to hold local elections in May would interfere with their task of transforming Worcestershire. Or wherever.
And by the way, if you were the BBC you would also be very hesitant in how you covered protests about these election cancellations. Demanding elections, demonstrating when they are cancelled, reporting on them as if they were a thing, that’s typical right wing press propaganda. You would not want to get involved in any of that, while you are in the middle of funding negotiations which could transform the BBC, would you?
Sorry,that should be the 35GW of gas that is coming to end of life. Not wind!
I stopped listening to “More or Less” after Harford’s puke inducing ‘interview’ with Anthony Fauci.
One knows the global warming narrative is falling apart when we hear ever more frequently that it’s really cold because somewhere else on the planet’s warming. Reminds me of that really, really awful movie, The Day After Tomorrow (2004).
From the article: “No attempt was made to question Otto’s bonkers claim that “every time it rains now, it rains more than it would have without climate change”. Not in Scotland, Harford might have noted, the rainiest country in the United Kingdom. As the Met Office graph below shows, the amount of Scottish rainfall has flatlined for about 40 years.”
So Otto’s Attribution “Science” doesn’t match reality.
Has Otto never looked at these statistics showing how wrong she is?
So what does that make Otto? Completely clueless? Or a deliberate liar?
Are attribution techniques used to predict weather events? If so, how successful are they? Somehow, I feel they are not, since it is easier to “explain” past events rather than predict the weather.
And did I get this wrong, or did I hear weather is not climate?
“Completely clueless? Or a deliberate liar”.
Difficult to tell. When she was at Oxford she told ‘Oxford People’
“What were concerns over the impact on (sic) climate change are understood realities, it is costing thousands perhaps, millions, of deaths globally every single year”
“37% of deaths from heatwaves over the last 30 years have been caused by climate change. And that is a conservative estimate”
She is a Phycisist with a doctorate in the philosophy of science.
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news-and-events/oxford-people/fredi-otto
It sounds like she ought to know better.
She’s in a position to know better.
Yet she spouts unsubstantiated Climate Alarm propagada on a daily basis.
An examination of her psychology would be very interesting.
Putting one conjecture-ridden erroneous and bogus climate model against a second model with even more bogus conjectures and fakery….
… IS NOT SCIENCE.
She is clueless just how anti-science the whole “attribution” methodology really is.
Attribution “Science” is definitely NOT science. It is pure guessing, and the people doing the guessing are bastardizing science for political/personal purposes
Weather is always weird. Never the same, even second to second.
How weird is that?
Everywhere I’ve ever been, and I’ve been in a lot of US states, was stationed in West Germany for 1.5 years, and visited the UK for a couple weeks in the early 90s, people everywhere will say “Don’t like the weather? Wait 15 minutes and it will change”.
This week I saw a headline in one of the Irish newspapers,
Ireland set for more extreme weather as climate data points to worsening trends.
There are two flaws here. First the expression extreme weather. This classification divides weather into two categories, normal and extreme. In reality there is a huge variety of weather conditions and who gets to decide if weather is extreme or normal? A huge snowfall on the Alps is normal in the winter. If some areas receive little snow in December is this extreme or are the areas that receive a record snowfall? Was the snowfall of 40cm in Walcha, New South Wales 2025 extreme weather because it is so rare? I would suggest that the designation, extreme weather, is misleading and dishonest.
The second flaw is stating that climate data points to worsening trends. If one were to compare data from each of the various climate zones and sub-zones one would not find that they are uniformly going in the same direction. Some years ago family told me they had had a miserable summer in New Zealand. I could say the same about a summer in Ireland but not at the same time. The time frame is important and the subtitle gives this away, “European analysts register 11-year streak of temperature records with warning of more to come.” Has the climate data been checked and how has it been processed and interpreted? The famous quote could be applied here, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and climate data.” Despite not having a homogenous thing called climate but various climate zones and a huge variety of weather conditions, people often compare apples to oranges. Conclusions are drawn from specific weather conditions while each climate zone has certain distinct features but also includes a variety of weather conditions with some similarities. A close examination will show that the article is simplistic and even despite the use of data misleading.
Many informed people would argue that an “11-year streak” of a local temperature is hardly a proof of climate change, particularly when climate generally defined as a 30-year period. One could argue that the nearly half century of data from UAH at the bottom of this page is generally agreed to be what it’s purported to be – roughly, monthly worldwide lower atmospheric temperature average. This could easily be a meaningful measurement of climate temperature.
Some interesting observations can be made from that data.
1. there is an upward trend in the data that is hardly catastrophic and may be explained by natural recovery from the little ice age, or may instead be explained by greenhouse gasses., or both, or other.
2. There are some significant unexplained multiple year variations that might be natural variation, or might be partially influenced by ENSO, volcanoes, or others.
3. Some have even made the argument that the multiyear variations in the data offer an indication, if not proof, that the falling temperatures over this timeframe demonstrate that rising CO2 cannot be a harbinger of catastrophe because global temperatures are falling while CO2 is rising during these periods. If you consider these to be natural variation, you should also then consider that the rising trend might also be natural variation.
Give the journalist a break /s…..they had to come up with something to fulfill their work commitment in a what has become a “gig” economy…had to make up a lot of stuff that sounded plausible before they hit the publication deadline….turned off “comments”…well cuz of “don’t give deniers a platform policies…” which protects their hiney from having to research actual facts….
The spouter of “facts” can only be as good as the Kool-aid they drink.
Maybe it’s just me, but it seems that “fact checking” was a big deal here in the US’s media until Biden took office. The MSM didn’t want to “fact check” the claims of his competency to hold office (IE He’s sharp as a tack!).
Canada’s CBC regularly does its bit to inject alarmism into the climate narrative by slyly cherry-picking a few isolated facts and occurrences and making them seem that they’re the new widespread reality. Just two days ago, I noticed its national TV news featured a brief segment claiming that 2025 featured the highest global temperatures “on record”. However it made no mention of evidence of obviously warmer periods that weren’t officially recorded in past centuries. Then it featured a brief interview with a British farmer showing remnants of his dried-up crop but said nothing of the UN’s own figures that revealed agricultural yields worldwide have been showing steady increases for several decades now. It also implied without providing any evidence that the warming planet would soon adversely affect the global population while sidestepping the real facts that those numbers have quadrupled since 1900. So this is why consumers largely scoff at the alarmist rhetoric and certainly don’t intend to change their lifestyles to combat an obvious non-problem.
Yet another example of why people have a lower and lower opinion of academia and the mainstream media.
“More or Less” has been loony left BBC mathematics for years.